by David Louden
“You remember our first date?” I asked.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make this hard…or weird.” Kelly had closed off.
“We shared the years”
“We shared each day”
“I didn’t mean to…”
Kelly interrupted “I’m sorry Doug. You’ve been real good to me, especially after…”
“Forget it…and forget that stutterin’ cunt.” It gets a laugh out of Kelly.
“I know you always thought me and Rick got together before…” Her throat dried.
“It’s not important anymore.”
“We didn’t. He was a friend and then he was great because he wasn’t you.”
“Fuck off!”
“You know what I mean,” she took a drink “and then…well here we are. But we weren’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked, fighting the tears.
“You needed to hate me. I think maybe I needed you to hate me. It made it easier for me.”
“I never,” that was kind of a lie, I stopped before it went from little white to black “…I don’t hate you anymore.”
“My mum is totally smitten with you now.” Kelly said with a smile.
“Your mum’s always been smitten with me fool!” I boasted.
“No,” she argued “she used to think you drank too much.”
“I do.”
“…and she didn’t like the fact that you smoked…but she’s sooo in love with you now.”
“Your dad had better watch out, Miriam’s still a quality piece of ass.”
Kelly laughed so hard she went into a coughing fit.
“Are you going to make a hat trick of Marley women?”
“I never slept with your sister Kel.” I said calmly.
“It’s ok if you did.” She said.
“Well I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“Oh yeah why’s that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I deflect.
“Why’s that?” She persists.
“Because I love you.” I said.
“Even with all.” She waves her hands around her midsection.
“You think I’m that fickle.”
“That wouldn’t be fickle.”
“Fuck off,” I say before restating “I love you.”
Kelly blew me a kiss and fell asleep in the chair. When the nurse came I’d help her keep Kelly’s machine leads from tangling as I lifted her up into my arms and carry her to bed. The cancer has been ruthless on my girl, she weighed next to nothing. I worried I’d break her.
I was on first name basis with Kelly’s Oncologist. It had got to the point where when he came around he would ask everyone to leave the room but me. Kelly had begun holding my hand when he was in with us explaining progress, then she’d hold it regardless of whether he was there or not. She would kiss me goodnight when she was awake enough to remember. Charles asked everyone to leave the room; I got up from the armchair and took my place on the side of her bed. I held her small, bony grey right hand in mine, grey like bad meat – as he went about breaking the news. I had gotten to know Charles’ face. The signs were all there. Forced smile, flat eyebrows, zero eye contact…fuck. Kelly’s cancer had spread. It had gotten into her liver and from there the blood.
“At this point it becomes more about managing your level of pain and making you as comfortable as possible.” Charles stated regretfully.
Kelly simply nodded. When he left she asked me to tell her family. I’ve never agreed as quickly to do something I wanted to do less. I would have cursed her for asking this of me if…if I didn’t love her so much. Damn Kelly. I walked to the waiting room like a man on death row does to the chair, his chair. Stepping inside I closed the door behind me. Then the convulsions started.
The morphine drip had left Kelly in the uninhabited realm between consciousness and unconsciousness. When I could I slipped outside for a cigarette and hated myself for doing so but I would quit when I was strong enough. I had a pain in my chest but I was sure it would pass eventually. Belfast was grey, sunlight had been missing from the capital for days. The rain threw down upon the streets, buildings and windows in biblical proportions. I sat in the armchair which I had now pulled to the side of the bed so I could sleep closer to Kelly. I had recently been prescribed reading glasses which I was getting used to as they balanced on the edge of my nose. I read aloud to Kelly from my first edition of 1984.
“I love you too.” Kelly murmured.
The sun lit up the sky for the first time in over a week on the morning of Kelly’s funeral.
24
MY EXODUS FROM LOST ANGELES brought no leaving party, no fine reception of friends. Not even a goodbye beyond Andrei’s wave. The hostel had slowly replaced all known bodies; all exhausted and starved faces had been swapped out for new ones. Ones with promise, they weren’t hiding from anything. There was no skeletons in their closets just camouflage khaki shorts, flip flops and styling gel to sculpt their spice boy haircuts. A ten minute search online found a motel near Muscle Beach that promised “Hollywood quality comfort for low dollars!”, I had one hundred of those low dollars left in my pocket and with my one sad bag I pounded the yellow grained pavement from Lost Angeles to the Motel for Movie Stars (an oxymoron if ever there was one).
The Korean woman behind the counter took my passport without a word. She took a second, squinted, glance at me, then back to the brown weather-beaten document, then me, then the passport again. “Christ have I aged that fuckin’ much?!” I asked myself. Eventually she hands me the passport back, hands me is probably the wrong term – rather she dropped in on the counter in my general direction before ringing through a nights stay. Clawing the ten dollar bill into the register and handing me a room key, I say handing…
“Room 12!” She yelled.
I pick up my room key and walked down the dark and silent corridor until I reached the room. Room 12 wouldn’t have looked out of place on Law & Order, an end of corridor room on the ground floor adjoining the fire exit. The door shows sign of a heavy kicking but the lock is new, sturdy. I throw my bag on to the bed and then having spied the lights of a liquor store exit via the fire door, propping it open with a bin before crossing the parking lot and slipping into store. I grab some Doritos and a six pack of Sam Adams before heading to the cash register and point out the cheapest bottle of vodka my eyes can find and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Slipping back in through the fire exit I grab two bags of ice from the machine and empty them into the bathroom sink before driving the beer and vodka bottle into the glassy structure in the green porcelain wash basin. I thumb through the change in my pocket, there’s probably enough for something to eat and the last ingredient.
Paco was as white as I am but years under the sun had weathered and worn his skin to a dry, brown, leather that resembled my old man’s wallet. He stood on his corner smoking cigarettes and listening to a walkman, staring blankly out to see. Every twenty minutes a man dressed like Jesus, only seven foot tall, walks past and tried to save Paco’s soul. The two men have been having the same fight for fuck knows how long.
“Hey baby.” Paco said to me blowing a smoke ring into the silenced Venice boardwalk.
“You well Paco?” I always tried to small talk him as though I’d hurt his feelings if I treated my interactions with the drug dealer as purely business.
“I’m as well as the Earth mutha man.” He offered.
“You mind?” I flash my cigarettes and light up beside him “How’s biniz this evening?”
“Fucking Jesus’ scaring off my people,” he said unemotionally “I think he’s a narc. I might have to kill him this night.”
“Well be careful with that shit. The last guy who did the same thing got a bad rap for himself.”
Paco nods as though what I had said had contained any real advice.
“So were you looking anything my Irish friend?”
I hand him a note I’ve
scribbled on the back of an In and Out napkin with fifty bucks tucked up inside it. He reads it before putting it in his pocket. Finishing his cigarette he turns and makes eye contact with me. Shaking my hand he palms me a plastic bottle which I put in my pocket.
Paco walks up the boardwalk, he usually circles the block after a transaction. Jesus marches over to him and attempts to put an arm around him, the two men bicker until they are swallowed up by the night and eventually their sound is drowned by the sea. I light a second cigarette and take a moment with Venice. She had been there for me the whole time I was in California. She had housed and fed me, I wasn’t good being alone. It led to thoughts all too often. A couple of homeless teenagers approached me looking for some spare change; I gave them twenty dollars when I saw one of them was wearing a Black Sabbath tee shirt.
When I got back to the motel someone had moved the bin so I had to pass the angry Korean lady. I got to the front door but she wasn’t there. As I entered I could see her halfway up the corridor, outside door 6 or 7 I thought, manically banging on the door as a TV raged inside.
“Too loud! Shut up!” She roared.
I past her as quietly as I could, opened my door and slipped inside. Turning on the TV I grabbed a beer from the bathroom sink turned on the magic fingers and lay down with a cold one. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Kelly’s face. Not as it was when she passed but from the first time we were together, when she was healthy, happy. No vision had ever hurt so much. My chest tightened every time I thought of her and how I’d never see her again. Thinking of Billie used to lift that but I had fucked that up too. Benoit was an asshole but there was surely a better way of dealing with it. The only consolation was that perhaps she knew, maybe she had pressured Chloe, even if she lied maybe there’s a chance that, when asked, Benoit would contradict her and the whole thing would come crumbling down. Billie would be upset but she’d get over it, she’d be better off without him and certainly better off without me.
Home came to mind. I’d never really thought of home before, I’d thought of how to escape – at one point me and Kelly were even going to sell up and move to the Sunshine state. “Funny how things work themselves out” I thought. I had taken provisions to spare my mum, my poor wee Irish mummy who had dealt with so much heart ache in her life…too much heartache. I had the idea of destroying my passport, with no I.D I’d be a John Doe, just another junkie in the City of Angels who can’t hold his mud. Then I remembered the Korean, she had taken a photocopy of it. The police would get my I.D from her; they’d contact the Embassy who would reach out to the Passport Office who’d inevitably trace current travel documentation, a renewal, to the original my mum got for me when I was six years old. “The world is a book,” she told me as we filled in the application form “and those who don’t travel never get past the first page Douglas”.
Deep breaths. Composure. I dialled Mum. She answered on the second ring; she never had that thing away from her hand.
“Hello.” She said conservatively.
“Morning Mum.” I wasn’t entirely sure what was going to follow that opener.
“Awk hello Douglas. I haven’t heard your voice in ages. Are you keeping well?”
“I’m good Mum.” I best keep it short.
“What’s the weather like?”
“Well it’s night so…dark but it’s usually great. Just as you’d expect really.”
“Awk that’s good, and are you having a good time?”
“I am Mum yeah.”
“That’s wonderful son. You’ve had such a hard time darling I hoped you’d get yourself a job there and just be happy.”
“Funny you should say that.” My lip was vibrating, eyes stinging from holding it all together.
“Why’s that son?” She asked excitedly.
“There’s a guy I know,” eyes sting “he’s sorted me out with a paid gig.”
“Wow Doug that’s great news…congratulations love, you deserve it. Do you miss me?”
She was waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t really considered.
“Of course.” I offered.
“Aye I bet. You meet any nice girls out there?”
“Yeah one.”
“What’s she like? What’s her name?”
“Mum,” eyes sting “I got to go, I’m actually workin’ at the minute I just wanted to call and tell you I love you; you old bird.”
“I love you too son. I won’t keep you, I’m sure you’re very busy. Will you be home for Christmas?”
“That’s months away.”
“I know but it’s not cheap getting all that way.”
“I dunno right now. I’ll try.”
“Ok love, well I’ll let you go. Make sure you call more often I’m always worrying about you when you’re quiet. You keep too much bottled up love, always ha…”
“Mum I gotta go.”
“Ok son, love you.”
I got off the phone just in time. Talking to the old lady was painful; she’d had a tough life. Dad was a useless alcoholic who couldn’t let anyone have anything if he didn’t have it; an angry drunk who was a little too chatty with his fists. Then there was my sister Tara and her increasingly awful taste in men, my brother was a layabout who got into drugs and was in and out of shit jobs and correctional facilities at a regular basis and then there was me. I got out of North Belfast as quickly as I could, got an education, worked hard to do something other than hang out at corner shops in tracksuits with small bags of cheap grass in my pockets. She’d have to arrange for my body to be shipped home. I would complete the foursome of fuck wits that would blight her life. I was regretful of that more than anything. Yet I’d be kind enough to ensure she wouldn’t have to wade through my shit to check my pulse but I wasn’t exactly making life easy for her. I just hoped that maybe they couldn’t locate her. Maybe. I was ready but I had one more call to make. This time it rang for a little longer before I got the ‘recently woken but pretending to be up and busy’ voice that I had mastered while at University.
“Hey what’s up?!”
“I wake you Janie?” I already knew the answer.
“Who’s this?”
“Real quick I want you to tell me what you’re wearing, don’t even think about it just lay it on me.”
“Doug?! Holy fuck! Where the fuck have you been? Seriously I’ve been worried fuckin’ shitless about you…”
“I’m in LA and…”
“That’s quite a distance for a booty call but if you want to make yourself comfortable.” She teased like the old days, it was nice.
“Don’t you’re makin’ my nuts tighten.”
“It’s good to hear from you. What the fuck you doing in LA?”
“I just needed to get away for a bit is all.”
“You having fun? Hittin’ it and quittin’ it?”
“Something like that.”
“So what makes me deserving of this?”
“I don’t think I’m coming home Janie…” there was a silence.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” eyes sting again “…and I just wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Appreciate it Doug. Are you ok?”
“Yup.”
“Seriously. The last time I saw you…you weren’t too...”
“Yeah I’m good Janie,” I fight back a throat thing “LA is exactly what I need right now.”
“I’m glad. Keep in touch ok?! I’ll come visit when I get a chance, you can show me the sights. Take me to the Saddle Ranch…ok?”
“Take care kiddo. I love you.”
Hanging up I wiped the tears and snot from my face, my eyes closed I saw them all. My mum, Kelly, Janie…Billie. Oh for fuck sake Billie. What the fuck have I let inside me? I had made such a conscious effort and yet it was completely in vain.
I had allowed myself to fall for her and in doing so had been dragging her down to my level ever since. She was beautiful, smart, an incredible person, capable of great things in her life. I had presen
ted to her my best face, had attempted to trick her even. Show her the uncomplicated fun loving self and before she knows it, there’s a twisted, scarred, tortured and burnt torso convulsing on her carpet that’s she now responsible for nurturing back to some degree of health. My chest was so tight I thought I was going to black out. Billie had no idea how fortunate she was. Had that answer machine not kicked in when it did she could have sealed the deal with a corpse. With someone who could never fully give her his heart because he had trained it to stop beating and yet it did. Every time I was around her, even her birthday party, I felt alive.
My heart would be wedged in my throat; my brain would be operating slower than was required to formulate a sentence. Blinking would become a hassle as it took away time that could be dedicated to staring at her. I loved her, I had no idea how I hadn’t seen it earlier. How it wasn’t obvious to me when I still had something of a life worth saving, when I could have done something about it; when I hadn’t committed a serious assault on her boyfriend in her brothers restaurant on her birthday. Thoughts were racing through my head at a mile per minute. My phone rang; I ignored it and carried on. I got another beer, it was the second I could remember taking but the last in the ice. The vodka was gone too and the ice had lost form as it acquainted itself with room temperature. My thoughts were fuzzy but not from alcohol. I checked the bottle of pills Paco sold me, I had done it. The night had been spent thinking over everything that had went wrong, everything I had done without thought of consequence, everyone I had hurt and lost along the way. My arms on autopilot feeding me morphine based painkillers and cheap booze. I could feel my self awareness shrink and retreat inside myself as my phone rang again. I glanced at it. The call was from Billie. I grabbed it, dropping it at first before finally concentrating on my actions enough to successfully answer the call.
“Hello.” I mutter.
“Hey.” Billie sounded upset.
“Hey.”
“Look I know we haven’t been on best terms recently but I need to ask a favour.” She said.
“What is it?”
“I got into it a bit with Benoit and I need you to come over to drive me to the hospital.”
